Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (55 page)

Brian sounded so clear and precise that his attorney had no more room to argue.

“O-kay,” he agreed to it.

Before they reached the black limousine at the sidewalk, Brian’s ex-wife ran out of the building with their two children holding her hands. And she began to yell down the cement steps toward him.

“BRYY-AN! BRYY-AN! THESE ARE YOUR
KIDS!
” she yelled at him.

Brian shook his head and never looked back. He asked his lawyer, “You see what I mean? They shouldn’t have even
been
here today. Even her
lawyers
know that. But she used her mother to bring them.” Then he climbed into the limo without another word.

As they headed back toward his Manhattan apartment inside the car, his lawyer shook his head and commented, “Wow! If she’s
that
bad, then how do you ever get a chance to see your kids in peace?”

Brian paused with his answer. “Well…the reality is…they become casualties of the divorce.”

His attorney looked into his stern and meaningful brown face inside the car and thought,
Shit! He just called his kids CASUALTIES!

He figured his client could have used a more humane word. But when they reached Brian’s sky-rise apartment building in busy Manhattan, he stated, “You know…you try to give a woman, your friends, and your family members as much as they need to be happy, and then you find out that it’s a never-ending cycle. Then you try to do something satisfying for yourself, and all hell breaks loose.”

“So, what do you do now?” he questioned. “Do you start the cycle all over again, with a new wife, new friends, and new family members? Or do you try to fix a broken record with Scotch tape?”

Then he laughed, while his attorney sat there dumbfounded.

“Put the paperwork together for me, Wade. And I’ll sign it once it’s ready,” Brian told him on his way out.

Wade placed his hand on Brain’s arm before he could leave.

“Are you okay? You sure you wanna be left alone right now? You don’t want to come up to talk, or go down to your offices?”

He was still concerned about his client’s mental state.

Brian shook it off. “Nah, not today. I’ll go back in the offices tomorrow. And I’m tired of talking
or
listening right now. Didn’t we both hear enough today? So I need to relax a minute.”

Wade, a young and sharp lawyer on his way up, had been around suicidal bosses before. And the bleak outlook that Brian discussed with him was surely a need for alarm.

Those may be the last words he ever says to me,
Wade panicked.
Maybe that’s why he’s trying to take care of his family like, RIGHT NOW!

“Are you sure? You don’t wanna do lunch or anything?”

Finally Brian frowned at him, reading his attorney’s obvious paranoia. “Wade, I’m not gonna do anything to hurt myself, okay? Now I’ll talk to you later.”

He climbed out of the limousine and headed into his building for the twenty-first floor.

“Hey, Mr. Culpepper? How’s your day been today?” the bellman asked him.

Brian forced a smile. “I can’t complain about too much. I can still afford to live in this building, right?”

The bellman chuckled at it. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that,” he commented. The apartment tower was not at all a cheap residence.

But when Brian arrived in his breathtaking apartment, with the New York city skyline in view from his living room, his smiling and joking was over. He walked over to his mahogany bookshelf and grabbed the first pictures he could find of his son and daughter, and he sat down on his dark leather sofa to stare at them. Then he slowly began to weep, with his right hand rubbing the tears away from both eyes.

He broke down and mumbled, “I love you guys. I love you
so much.
”

But…I can’t stop from living my life,
he thought to himself.
There’s too much living left to do.

He stood up with the picture of his kids and walked over to his living-
room window to look out again at one of the most fabulous skylines in the world; Manhattan, New York.

“I’m gonna miss this city,” he stated. His plans to move far away had already been made. Brian wasn’t just moving to another city, or to another American state. He had decided to leave the country completely. He had been doing good business with well-respected men internationally, and he had traveled to countries around the world. And sometimes he envied what he saw, a world of so many different opportunities…for
everything.
All he had left to do was to break free from the shackles that held him hostage in America.

So he took another look at his kids in their smiling picture, as he took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he muttered to himself, “…I’m gonna
pray
for you guys.”

Nine months later in the city of Mumbai, India, Brian Culpepper had officially changed his religion to Islam, and his given name to Khalif Raj Muhammad. From his comfortable mansion off the coast of the Arabian Sea, he paced back and forth with his cell phone to his ear in front of a scenic, second-story living room that overlooked the beautiful blue waters that were less than a mile west of his villa. He was dressed in a golden silk sari, with a white-and-gold headdress, and no socks or shoes in the comfort of his home, while engaged in a long-distance conversation with his older brother, Jacob, in Long Island, New York.

“I mean, what are you planning to do, Brian? You’re never gonna come home again to help raise your kids?” his brother argued.

“With all due respect, my name is Khalif Raj Muhammad now. And I’m hoping, with your good blessings, that you’ll be able to step in and help raise your niece and nephew for me in the spirit of Allah.”

Khalif spoke with calm and poise, and he was free of the constant stress, the despair, the betrayal and the anguish that he had felt over the past four years in America. And he was ready to fulfill a very important meeting that afternoon. So he was anxious to finish his brother’s burdening phone call.

Jacob responded tartly. “Look, man, don’t talk to me with that brainwashing
Muslim shit. You could have done that in
America
if that’s what you really wanted to
do.
Because my niece and nephew are not
my
responsibility.”

Khalif responded to him calmly. “Nor have you been
my
responsibility as my older brother. But
En sh’ Allah
(God willing), I was always able and willing to help
you
in your personal struggles.”

Khalif had helped not only his older brother in
his
personal and family issues, but he had helped plenty of their family members as well; with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and countless hours of sound business advice, only for them all to fail at lifting even a
pinkie
to help him in
his
times of need. In fact, it was his older brother, Jacob, who had introduced him to his eventually spiteful mistress, who had led to Brian’s final unraveling in America. So Khalif began to smile to himself and enjoy how much better his life would be abroad.

Feeling guilty about their past, Jacob countered, “Oh, so you still gon’ hold
that
over my head? Look, man, we all make mistakes in life. You made mistakes,
too
. Don’t try to act like you all
perfect
just ’cause you helped me out a few jams. But
I
didn’t just jump up and try to fly away from
my
problems. I stood here like a man and
faced
them.”

“But what
if
you were able to leave America?” Khalif asked his brother civilly. “And what if you had found a better way to live with people who really
appreciate
you? Would you have given yourself a chance to make a change for a better life?”

Jacob paused before he answered. He had always realized that his younger brother had been the most driven, rational and supportive of all of their family members. So he became more
careful
with his choice of words.

“Man, when you go to another country, it’s
always
gon’ feel like that, Brian. You an
American.
But the grass ain’t always greener. And sometimes you gotta learn to refertilize your own lawn and get the weeds out, that’s all.”

Khalif smiled again, impressed with his brother’s analogy. Then he countered it. “And sometimes we have to be intelligent enough to know when to walk away for much better
acreage.
That’s business one-oh-one, Jacob,” he told his brother matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but your
family
ain’t a
business,
man. We talking about your
blood
here.”

Khalif told him, “The message of Islam teaches us that our
families
are the
most important business of our
lives.
So why would I
not
treat my family like a business? That was my biggest downfall in America. But now I am no longer blinded by the separation between church and state. And my business, my family and my
religion
should all work as
one.
”

“Aw, Brian, Christianity teaches you the same damn thing, man,” Jacob argued. “That separation between church and state shit is only for the government. But you can do what you want to in your own
house.
”

Khalif responded, “Exactly. And we did. We did everything that was
wrong.
And I no longer want to live that way.”

“All right, fine, you live however you wanna live. But don’t cut your
kids
off, man. What did
they
do?”

Jacob had a good point. The children were innocent. But as long as they were connected to his ex-wife, and to the old weeds of the damaged lawn, Khalif felt vulnerable to touch them. So he had already convinced himself for the better, to take a tough-love approach with his American children to insulate himself against his past weaknesses.

“
En sh’ Allah,
when they are old enough to make their own decisions, then we’ll see if they would like to join me.”

“Aw, man, what kind of cop-out shit is that? You know damn well your kids don’t have a choice in something like that,” Jacob snapped.

Khalif said, “And when they
do,
I will explain to them their
mother’s
way and
my
way. And then they’ll have their
own
choice to come and go as they
please,
as long as they respect the Prophet
Muhammad’s
way and his journey to
Allah,
whenever they are with
me.
”

He then looked at his eighteen-karat gold watch, and he realized that he had said enough. He would need to be leaving for his important meeting soon.

“Look, man, you can’t tell your kids what to do like that, once they’re already
grown,
” Jacob advised him.

“Jacob, we’ll need to finish this conversation at another time. I have a very important meeting to make in the next hour that I need to prepare for,” Khalif informed his older brother.

“Yeah, whatever, man. It’s in the middle of the damn night over here anyway. I need to get some sleep. I just wanted to make sure I caught you with the time difference. And we’re
not
done talking about this
either.
So you call me
back.
Your children
need you,
man. So you think about that for a minute.”

When Khalif hung up the phone with his brother, he was forced to take another deep breath to compose himself. The mental and spiritual welfare of his children was still an obvious weakness for him, as it
should
be. Nevertheless, he would not stray from his chosen path.

“I’ll just have to convince my brother to help raise them to keep them close to me,” he expressed. Then he gathered himself to leave.

“Nasid,” he called to his housekeeper and driver as he headed down his staircase.

Nasid, a dutiful Indian man dressed in all white, popped into view from the entrance foyer of the house.

“You ready to go?” he asked in choppy English.

“Yes,” Khalif answered.

“Good. I go get the car.”

Khalif slid on his soft, brown leather shoes and walked outside of his earth-tone home on a pleasant and sunny day of eighty-eight degrees. As he awaited his driver to pull the car out in front of him, he stared up at the blue sky of scattered white clouds and was at peace with himself.